Another research paper concludes no evidence exists that methane emissions from livestock represent a risk to Earth’s climate

Yet another paper concludes livestock emissions of methane are not responsible for global warming. Dr Albrecht Glatzle, author of over 100 scientific papers and two text books has had research published that shows “there is no scientific evidence, whatsoever that domestic livestock could represent a risk for the Earth’s climate”.

This is the third paper in as many months that find methane is not causing global warming.

The point of Dr Glatzle’s paper is that in all the models they conjure up to make their conclusions about livestock emissions (and others to be fair) they should subtract the baseline emissions of the respective native ecosystems. Omitting this correction leads to a systemic overestimation of farm born non CO2 greenhouse gas emissions.

Now I am no expert in this and I don’t even know how credible Dr Glatzle is but what I do know is that the question marks over the impact of methane emissions from livestock are growing.

Initially they told us that methane was 25 times more potent than CO2 and for that reason 1 tonne of methane was equivalent to 25 tonnes of CO2 and this meant that every tonne of methane produced created 25 tonnes of carbon. Methane according to them contributed 35% of our carbon emissions. And carbon emissions were the measure of an activities global warming properties.

Then they said that not all carbon emissions are the same (even though the idiots invented it to be an equivalence unit) and carbon sourced from long lived gases like CO2 need to reduce to zero and carbon sourced from short lived gases like methane only have to stabilize.

Then the climate scientists get in a fight with one (Andy Reisinger) arguing methane emissions need to reduce and another (Dave Frame) arguing they don’t

Meantime none of the Einstein’s involved in government climate policy figured out that carbon is supposed to be an equivalence unit so if one carbon emission is different to another then it’s clearly not an equivalence unit and so must be a cockup and they should not use it.

To be serious for a moment (and it is hard in the midst of the joke that methane emissions have become) they never knew much about methane at all. Dr Glatzle points out that the world population of domestic livestock rose by 100 million head between 1990 and 2005 and in that time the rise in atmospheric concentration of methane was zero. The climate chumps should be able to explain that and they can’t. They have never established a scientific link between livestock emissions of methane and its impact on atmospheric methane. The lack of any scientific link between them was also confirmed to me many years ago by Keith Lassey who was principle scientist at NIWA. So whether livestock emissions of methane have any impact on atmospheric methane is all only theory anyway.

But we were all prepared to accept that on the balance of probability and common sense, if methane emissions increased the atmospheric concentration of methane would too. Of course conditional upon that was that common sense also dictates that stable methane emissions do not increase the concentration of atmospheric methane. (This common sense was lacking of course when they invented the carbon unit)

This is where they should have left it but then along came Simon Upton who released a ‘Note’ (non peer reviewed & unpublished ) by Andy Reisinger saying that it was not just about what impact emissions have on atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations but there were matters of atmospheric physics to account for and because of that methane emissions needed to reduce by 10% or so.

So Upton has opened the door to a scientific debate, not just about what impact livestock have on the concentration of atmospheric methane, but on what impact they have on atmospheric chemistry and physics. Now three papers have been released showing that when you take in to account matters of atmospheric chemistry and physics, methane from livestock plays no significant role at all because they forgot to account for natural baselines, the wave band width which with methane absorbs radiant heat is too narrow to make a difference and of course the original issue that these carbon emissions that made methane such a significant factor were a cock up.

Add to all this the fact that they have never established a scientific link between livestock methane emissions and atmospheric methane and it is all very very dodgy. Upton is the one who signed us up this carbon nonsense in the first and now he has opened the door to a scientific debate about atmospheric chemistry and methane, which has and never will be more than a theory because they just don’t know.

The Reisinger ‘note’ is a good thing because now having released it Upton must consider all research on the impacts of livestock emissions of methane. He will quickly discover a simplistic mathematical model like Reisinger’s is ridiculously inadequate and they know very little about methane. A lot of what they do know is from research which points to methane not being the problem it has been portrayed as. He needs to establish the scientific link that does not exist to establish methane is a problem just to get us back to the point where we can rely on common sense and conclude increasing methane emissions are a problem and stable methane emissions are not. He may wish he had never steered us away from that.